Twelfth Night Essay

BACKGROUND LECTURE ON TWELFTH NIGHT The following information is based upon my taped lecture on this play. Although this text version is not the same as the taped lecture, it does contain the same information. All references are based on the Signet paperback edition which you should consult in conjunction with this lecture. Twelfth Night was probably written in 1601 and first performed in January of 1602. We know this because the play is mentioned that year in the diary of a young man training to become a lawyer at the Inns of Court in London. We can also tell the approximate date of the play from the references to contemporary events and publications, things like books or new maps. To place the publication in Shakespeare's
The immediate source is a book by a man named Barnaby Ridge titled Ridge: His Farewell to the Military Profession written about 20 years earlier. Ridge wrote a collection of stories he had picked up from many sources and to which he added his own inventions. One of Ridge's stories is about a young woman who disguises herself as a young man and goes to work for a handsome young lord with whom she promptly falls in love. The young lord orders his new employee to go off and win the love of a beautiful woman that he desires. The heroine in disguise tries her best, but the beautiful woman falls in love with her disguise. Comic confusion results. Ridge had stolen this story line from an Italian play written earlier, but in reality the ideas here go back to the ancient Greeks and Romans who often wrote about girls who used disguise to get around the restrictions of their own societies. The ancients also had lots of fun with characters who looked alike; identical twins were special favorites. One of the Roman playwrights that Shakespeare had read in school, Plautus, had written a famous comedy about a set of twins; Shakespeare had used it as the basis for his first comedy, Comedy of Errors. So this sophisticated comedy of Twelfth Night is actually based on very old